Ranked Choice Voting

KPFA Evening News Anchor Cameron Jones: The KPFA Local Station Board election is now in its final days by mail. Ballots must be received at the address on the return envelopes by December 11th to be counted. KPFA's Ann Garrison spoke to the Pacifica National Elections Supervisor about the Single Transferable Voting system variant of Ranked Choice Voting that will be used to determine the results.

KPFA/Ann Garrison: Ranked Choice Voting is intended to give the greatest number of people in an electorate some say in the election of a single representative. In San Francisco and Oakland’s Ranked Choice Voting elections, votes may go to their second or third choices after their first choice has been eliminated. Single Transferable Voting, the multiple seat variant of Ranked Choice Voting that is used in the KPFA Local Station Board elections, is intended to create proportional representation of KPFA’s listener community on a board of 25 members.

Terry Bouricius: Pacifica is not alone in using STV. It was actually invented back in the 1800s, has been used for government elections in Australia since the 1800s. Many cities in the United States use STV: New York City, Cleveland, a lot of places. Cambridge Massachusetts still uses it today for their city council, and Minneapolis used it for some minor offices. Its got a long history and is used in a lot of countries. . . Ireland, other places around the world. A lot of people are familiar with voting systems that, when there's many seats, that they vote for as many people as they want, the person who gets the most votes wins one of the seats. The next top vote getter gets the next seat and so on. The problem with that system is a group that is the largest group in an electorate can win every single seat, and while in some sense that might be considered democratic, what it means is that substantial minority groups are completely shut out and get no representation on the Board. Having proportional representation assures that the final mix of winners will be proportionate and reflect the diversity of the electorate.

KPFA: That was Pacifica National Elections Supervisor Terry Bouricius. Once again, ballots in the KPFA Local Station Board election must be received, at the address on the return envelopes, by December 11th to be counted.